Rules Team & Rules Committee Open Positions

The IQA Rules Department has open positions available on both the Rules Team and Rules Committee, and is specifically focused on candidates who will improve both gender and geographical diversity within both of these groups. 

These two groups are central to the process of amending the IQA rulebook.

Applications for the Rules Team are now open, and will be filled on a rolling basis, with a hard closing date of March 26th.

Members of the Rules Team will have the following responsibilities:

• Review and debate external and internal proposals for changes to the rules for the 2023-24 rulebook, with approved rules being sent to the full Rules Committee.
• Craft wording to apply approved proposals to the IQA rulebook.
• Update the Casebook for the 2023-24 rules.
• Serve on the Rules Committee (See below).

This team requires roughly 2 hours a week from the end of March through mid to late June.  Additional, less regular meetings in the second half of the year also occur, including any Rules Committee meetings. Regular attendance is required, but perfect attendance is not. Meeting times are scheduled on weekends around the availability of the full team.

There is a common misconception that the IQA Rules Team is only looking for applicants with officiating experience, or who are extremely knowledgeable of the rules, however this is not true. The Rules Team values a diversity of perspectives. As such, a volunteer does not need a highly detailed understanding of the rulebook to be a strong contributor to the process. While the rules team does need, and currently has, volunteers who have a highly detailed understanding of the rules, this is not required from all members. A basic working knowledge of the rules is sufficient to be able to judge what can help make the sport better.  Individuals who have played quadball for a year will have that level of knowledge of the rules. With this in mind, the following are the requirements for applicants applying for the rules team:

• Have been involved in the sport for at least 12 months
• Have a basic working understanding of the rules
• Care about the rules generally and about the impact of the rules on the wider community

This team would ideally be fully staffed with 8 members, and represent a diverse range of experience levels, genders, and geographical regions. However, during the last two cycles, applications were lacking in diversity.  This was particularly true of gender diversity.  While efforts have been made in the past two cycles to specifically recruit more gender diversity in the applicant pool, these previous attempts have failed to meet the IQA’s goals, and the Rules Team has held positions open, running at its minimum size during the last two cycles, in order to ease future attempts at increasing diversity. In an effort to promote greater diversity in applications this cycle, the IQA is explicitly and publicly stating that the goal of improving gender diversity on the Rules Team is a primary focus in the application process, and directly calling for applicants who would improve the gender diversity of the team.  While applicants of all genders are welcome, the IQA will be showing strong preference for women, non-binary candidates, and transgender candidates of any gender.

Applications for the Rules Committee are also now open for at-large positions.  This will be a rolling application process and will close on April 16th.

The Rules Committee is a larger group, with a size dependent on NGB participation.  In the previous rules cycle, this group consisted of a total of 19 members, including the official NGB representatives.  This group has the following responsibilities:

• Review the proposals of the IQA Rules Team.
• Suggest revisions to IQA Rules Team proposals
• Approve or block IQA Rules Team proposals
• Approve or block the requests of participating NGBs for local amendments to the new rulebook.

During the last cycle, this committee met a total of 5 times for approximately 2 hours each time after discussing and debating the proposals in internal online threads in advance of those meetings, which occurred between June and August.  However adjustments to this committee’s procedures are expected to reduce the number of live meetings.

Due to the size of the team, meeting scheduling is not as likely to accommodate all members.  Meeting times will be adjusted to ensure as many members can access as many meetings as possible and meetings are held on weekends to avoid common work hours, but members are able to fully participate and vote without attending meetings, and meeting attendance is not required.

The IQA is also focused on ensuring a diverse range of genders and geographical regions are represented in the at-large portion of the Rules Committee.  Due to the number of expected positions available for this team, however, there are no specific stated preferences for applicants at this time. Nevertheless, people with historically underrepresented genders and geographical backgrounds are encouraged to apply. 

Applications to both teams can be submitted here.

Improving the gender diversity of these teams is a priority for the IQA. Although efforts have been made in the past to increase diversity, these have largely been unsuccessful. As such, the IQA is making its interests known publicly in an attempt to draw more interest from a more diverse range of people. The IQA encourages readers of this article to share it with anyone they may know who may be interested in working on the rules of this sport.

If anyone has any questions, please email gameplay@iqasport.org, or reach out to the rules manager, Michael Clark-Polner.